PvP -- A Way of Life

In the past week one of the topics brought up on twitter was PvP in Diablo III. The entire Diablo series has always been one where the player versus player combat was unstructured. There are no arenas, no real PvP rules, and anyone can kill another player at any time. While the majority of the player base in Diablo II seemed to evolve a structure of some "good manners" rules to create a sort of dueling system, that was by no means the extent of player versus player interactions in Diablo or Diablo II.

In order to discuss player versus player combat or "PvP," I believe there are a few terms which need to be defined. One thing we have to realize is that there will always be malicious players out there who enjoy nothing more than ruining your fun. If you're in act 1 game, they kill Andy, if you're in a Baal game, they hostile the party, if you're in a duel game they bring in their drop barb and crash everybody out. Removing these mechanics doesn't remove these players. We're going to call these players griefers and we're going to call griefing a social fact.

Social facts are nothing new and specific to on-line gaming. A social fact is a value shared by a society or a group within it, and the value exists throughout the group. To take this to an extreme, getting rid of PvP won't stop people from griefing other players. Imagine if hardcore had no PvP in Diablo II. You could still train monsters to waypoints, exploit bugs to cause players to damage themselves, and purposefully place others in harm's way. No amount of restrictions will remove the type of players who want to do this. Since there will always be griefers and we can't remove them, in designing a system for PvP we'd need some way to make it as fun for as many people as possible without removing the freedoms other players enjoy. After all, some masochists like to be hunted down and PK'd in hardcore. The most common form of PvP griefing is to kill another player when they do not want to participate in PvP combat. Diablo II's system, and in fact every Diablo game, has enabled this.

In order to understand PvP we will need to understand the two main categories of PvP. Consensual PvP and non-consensual PvP. Consensual PvP is called dueling. Both players agree to duel on specific terms and fight within those rules. The rules are technically enforced by the system creating what we call good manner duels and bad manner duels. Both types of duels adhere to the game's rules (though possibly not the player's rules). For example, many so called good manner duels prohibit the use of rejuvenation potions in Diablo II, but there's no game mechanic that prevents using rejuvenation potions in PvP.

The other form of PvP is non-consensual. In Diablo II this is known as PK. The point where non-consensual PvP is griefing is when one player doesn't want the fight. This makes is pretty much impossible to tell when you're griefing somebody because how would you know which person standing around in a game or fighting a boss would be willing to fight you at that exact moment? My friend Eric loves to be hunted down while he is playing Hardcore, it makes the game fun for him. Many people however do not enjoy this but how do you tell when you're griefing somebody or when you're both having fun? It should be fairly obvious that it is nearly impossible to distinguish when PK is not griefing in an on-line game. This of course leads to a pretty obvious solution to the griefing problem via the PvP system.

It would be pretty easy to just remove world PvP. For all intents with the removal of the old title reward system it happened in World of WarCraft. Currently in Diablo II any player can express hostility to any other player without their permission and kill them at any time. Most people, as is evident from playing in public games, do not enjoy being hunted down and slaughtered by random people on-line. Player versus Player interaction would be restricted to dueling only. This is what most people do anyway, aside from the griefers who hunt down people for sport. This removes the issue of well geared level 95 players entering quest games and decimating groups of level 40 players. In fact it seems like a pretty great solution at first glance.

Some people, however, do want to be hunted down at random and attacked. These sorts of people might find Diablo II game content fairly easy and wish to have the additional challenge of having to fight players while they play through the game. This might seem masochistic, and the group may be small, but these people exist and should not be ignored if they can be accommodated. The sorts of players who enjoy this are commonly those who do not "play to win" but "play to play." So what if their avatar gets killed, they start over. Other players only add challenges and challenges make the game fun. There is a solution for them too, which has worked throughout every Diablo title to date.

We could always not change the PvP system. The current system works. Diablo II is one of the greatest games of all time and the Diablo II hostility system is basically the same as the Diablo hostility system, except it expresses hostility against people hostile to you automatically. It's worked for the Diablo series for over 12 years now and why fix what isn't broken?

The current system is broken though. Sure people have been playing for years and every time I log in to Battle.net there are at least 60,000 people playing during the weekday. There are however forum posts every week about people getting their items destroyed from players killing them dozens of times, and people using exploits to kill hardcore characters which may be impossible for untrained players to notice until it's too late. Some people even profit off griefing by stealing other player's gold to use for gambling and trading. Although some may feel that the "it's fine learn to play" mentality is ok, it is obvious that a great many players are unhappy with the current system.

Currently Jay Wilson, the lead designer of Diablo III, has expressed that the development team is going with the first option of removing world PvP to combat griefing in Diablo III and I have to say it seems like a good idea. In an interview with Jay, he explains that the current design goal is to move away from the lack of "formal support" for PvP in Diablo II. He says:

Official Blizzard Quote:

In the original Diablo and Diablo II PvP was just kind of a switch people turned on and there was no real formal support for it so that's something we want to change but we have not exactly decided how we are going to do that.

I would like to stress that formal support does not by any stretch mean that informal player versus player combat should be removed, or even that one would reduce the draw toward players participating in the other form.

Official Blizzard Quote:

Jay goes on to say the following in another interview with GameSpy:
We'd like there to be a dedicated PvP mode, and we'd like to move away from [how it worked in previous Diablo games] where players just enabled PvP.

Dedicated PvP is good, and as Jay also points out:

Official Blizzard Quote:

... we do not allow the 'hostility mode' that Diablo II had where you can go into town, go hostile, pop back through a town portal, and insta-kill your friend.

I feel that, in the spirit of making the most people happy, we can come to a better solution than simply removing world PvP. Removing world PvP doesn't make everybody happy, excluding the griefers of course, so it might not be the best solution to the problem. We want to make the masochistic players who crave challenges happy too, and it can be done without making the system exploitable by griefers.

Remember, we cannot remove griefers, so in finding a system that makes everybody happy we cannot focus on removing griefers. PvP should not be the tool to scare malicious players out of the game. Exploits should be fixed to stop people from harming others, and worrying about how to deal with untouchable players when you can't just kill them is not within the scope of our solution nor is it within the scope of Jay's current solution.

My solution is fairly complex, but it should play out simply enough. Since we do not know how Diablo III will work in terms of user interface, PvP structure and so on, I will actually explain this system as it would work in Diablo II.

The first and foremost goal of the PvP system is to remove the ability for people to attack those who do not want it. To this end characters could select PvP or standard upon character creation. This would determine how you wish to play through the game. Standard characters would play through the game content without player interruption and their only player versus player interaction would be in, for the sake of assuming we have learned something from World of WarCraft, dueling arenas. PvP characters would be open to attack from other players, but of course it's a bit more complex than that.

Unlike the two game content oriented modes Hardcore, which is you only live once, and Softcore, which is you are punished for getting your hero killed but the game does not end, PvP and standard characters should not be separated. There are a few reasons for this. The first reason is I do not feel that separating players is good for a community when the separation is not required to maintain the goals of the separation in the first place. Hardcore characters are supposed to be hardcore, you only live once. This means some things players can do in Softcore are not viable strategies in Hardcore. Hardcore in fact makes the player versus environment content more challenging which means the characters are not in fact playing the same game and the character types are incompatible. This would not be the same situation for PvP and standard characters. PvP characters would be playing through the same rules as their standard counterparts in regards to monster interaction and would thusly be playing the same game. This is of course not the only reason to keep PvP and standard characters together. First however I need to explain how the process would work.

The example I am going to use contains five players. Three of these players are completing some sort of quest within the game in a group. One of these players is PvP character. Two of them are not. There is another group of two standard characters. One of these players is nice, but one of these players is a malicious player with intent to PK the PvP character. Besides the PvP character, all characters in the game are standard.

For sake of understanding how the system works better, I'll use Diablo II characters in this situation. The PK character is an assassin class character using melee abilities. The person in the group with her is a paladin with the fanaticism aura active which increases damage for physical attacks, among other things. The PvP character, and our victim in this case, is a druid with the active skill oak sage. Oak sage provides a bonus to the party increasing their maximum life. The other two characters are both amazons and are granting no abilities to the druid.

The Assassin enters town and expresses hostility toward the druid and his party by clicking hostile on the party screen. Note that if there were no PvP characters in the game there would be nobody to hostile and it could not be done. Also note that the druid, even though he is PvP, cannot initiate hostility against a standard character. He would have to wait for the standard character to initiate it.

The druid is hostile back at once. In addition because the assassin is hostile but her party member is not, the paladin in her party no-longer grants his aura's bonus to players he is not hostile with. This means that when attacking the druid, the assassin attacks with her normal damage at her normal rate. The druid on the other hand is hostile back automatically. He is not hostile against the paladin nor has he expressed intent to fight him. If the paladin wanted to join the battle he would also have to express hostility to the druid.

The druid on the other hand is granting his passive oak sage bonus to the two amazons. The non-hostile amazons receive the benefit from the druid's passive skills even though they are not hostile. The amazons have also received an invitation to hostile the assassin. If they wanted they could join the battle to help the druid, for sake of the situation let's say one of them does. Now there are two players hostile to the Assassin's party.

The druid is getting low on life by this point and decides he cannot win the battle. In order to save himself and his precious ear he chooses the save and exit game option. Now we're left with a game that contains 4 standard characters and no hostile characters. The assassin has expressed hostility to the first amazon and she has accepted. The paladin in the assassin's party wishes to join in, since now it's a fair fight and he knows what's happening. Even though there are no PvP characters in the game the amazon has already expressed her intent to engage the Assassin in combat, and because of our previous rule where expressing hostility to a party member expresses hostility to the party the paladin can join in by accepting the challenge. That is only if they want to. The second amazon does not wish to fight and continues slaughtering demons to her heart's content.

Note the difference between this system and the current system. With this method nobody entered the fight who didn't wish to fight. In addition nobody was out of the fight but aiding others who were in the fight via passive skills. If you wanted to aid your teammates you were forced to join the battle. This is great but let's address the apparent weaknesses with such a system and potential alternatives.

The two questions that jump to mind, besides why not separate these character types which we already discussed, are why not choose PvP or standard games on game creation instead and how does this remove griefers. I will address the second point first.

It quite simply doesn't remove griefers. Such a feat is not possible at least accepting the premise that griefing is a social fact. Since we cannot remove those types of players, I dodged the issue completely by removing their ability to grief using the PvP system while keeping in PK. Of course there will be other ways to grief, but that is not within the scope of the PvP system, at least I feel it should not be. Jay Wilson's solution certainly doesn't address the fact that you cannot kill players who are griefing you with it. I currently don't have a better way than Diablo II's current system to do this, and of course we've already seen that system does not work.

In order to solidify the system against griefing however, we must make sure there are safeguards to non-PvP characters participating in world PvP combat. I would suggest the following safety measures, which for obvious reasons would only apply to Softcore games. The first solution I would propose is once a standard character is killed, they are no-longer hostile to any other players, and other players are no-longer hostile to them. This ensures that players cannot corpse camp standard characters or otherwise harm them once the initial battle has taken place. Note this would not apply to PvP characters. The second safeguard I suggest is when other players join a party, or enter a game, they are not automatically hostile to those hostile to their party, the automatic hostility only happens when the initial event is triggered. This is to stop players from playing both sides in order to get very powerful characters in situations where they are fighting standard characters only.

Secondly the character creation issue ties into separation of character types we discussed earlier and of course discourages people from making not only PvP type characters, but PK characters being the characters used to hunt down PK characters. The goal of keeping characters together in game is to broaden the potential pool of people who could attack a PvP created character. If for example you are in a game with two PvP characters and six standard and you know that standard characters cannot attack you, it's going to be fairly easy to watch just one person. If you are in a game and anybody can attack you it makes the game harder, and thusly more fun for the people who would choose the PvP style. Why would we remove fun?

There do need to be incentives to play a PvP character, besides the rush of playing PvP. They don't need to be big incentives but big enough that people on the fence would decide to create a PvP hero. The incentives I thought of are firstly, add finishing the game as a PvP character to the upcoming achievement system for Battle.net 2.0. Achievements make people want to play to reach those goals. This would interest perfectionists and goal oriented players who might not otherwise have the desire to pick PvP. The second reward I feel would be appropriate would be an awesome title. In Diablo II characters were awarded titled for completing a difficulty level and the cooler titles obviously went to the characters who played the more challenging hardcore mode. I suggest giving PvP characters both hardcore and softcore better titles for completing the game on each difficulty. Players would be like "Wow! How do you get that awesome 'avatar of Chuck Norris' title?" Oh, you could say, well you need to make a PvP character.

The final incentive I would suggest for the PvP characters is have player ears, which was the reward for killing other players in Diablo II, similar to a shrunken head or a dog tag, only drop for players killed via PK, not through duels. This would create an incentive to kill PvP characters, especially in hardcore, just to prove you had done it and would allow players to have bounties on PvP characters. Rewards aren't the only thing the system needs to attract players. It also needs to be approachable.

To this end I recommend not restricting interaction between PvP and standard characters. Like battlegroups in World of WarCraft where all types of servers are in one group, PvP and standard characters would play together in arenas. They would also however adventure together, and most importantly be able to trade together. This would allow people to make PvP twinks to PK other players, or make standard characters easily if you had PvP characters. Allowing people this option only makes it more fun, because making the opponents more difficult is the goal with the PvP character type. Better outfitted players fighting you means a more enjoyable gameplay experience and also encourages players to decide to "try" PvP after playing through the game on standard instead of creating another standard character since they can transfer good low level gear to their new PvP character from their standard character.

In addition to approachability and rewards my system offers one final thing that the current design of PvP system does not, that is familiarity with the previous Diablo PvP systems. Instead of adopting completely the system we have in World of WarCraft of separating people into small groups of like-minded players and even then forcing them into arenas to combat each other my system builds on the familiarity of the previous Diablo games by allowing people to express hostility to others whenever they wish in terms of PK while still leaving enormous room for a organized dueling system. The dueling system should have real rewards like World of WarCraft does and both players of PvP and standard characters will be able to enjoy this. Players who wish to have the added challenges of a hostile and unforgiving Diablo experience should also be able to have them, and I feel my system allows players to do this without destroying the experience of those who just want to adventure through the game with their friends safely.

Comments

Suprised, ive never read an article that long, but this ones important to me.

The first one is a nice idea, but for that you dont neccessarily need to choose the PvP option upon chatacer creation would you? Counldnt you just make it so any attempt at (hostality) results in the request to fight? Then any character can express hostility at any time(rather request it at any time) and all the other character has to do is accept or decline? You could also add base rules, like potion use or not, or added or cancled features

**"##### requests to duel you, with use of potions" or "##### requests to duel you, without use of potions" or

**''##### requests to duel with you, without towning option" blocking waypoint and town entrances untill one person is defeated or

**"##### requests to duel, with (without) PK" with could continue the hostality, and without could end the hostility once one dies

**"##### requests to duel you, with reduced stamina" for people who want a real fight, not somone who runs the whole time or

**"##### requests to duell you, with suchh and such"

I think if you used the almost build-a-duel, it would be an easy concept, all you do is click a few buttons how you want the fihgt to be, and send the request. Players could even talk first, "How do you want the fight?" set it that way, accept and go. That way theres a variety of dueling experiancesw, and no need to create a PvP enabled character almost like this:
[ ]: Ladder
[x]: PvP
[ ] Hardcore
it just makes it so anyone can create the request when they want it. NOTE: There also needs to be a mechanic that stops request for a certain ammount of time if the uses denies a certain ammount. Otheriwse I could spam you with requests untill you leave or accept. But wait, I poressed no on accident. You should be able to send 3 or so requests per person, once all denied they stop fr 5-10minutes or so. Or what if you accidently accepted instead of declined? Well what could solve that is another simple mechanic, if a player resiodes in a fae area (town) for 30seconds after acceptance, its cancelled. That way contestands accept request ready to duel, and simple wait a short time if didnt mean to accept.

If a player chooses non-pvp upon character creation, I'd like to see the ability to change to pvp later on. It is entirely conceivable that someone new to the game might feel a little overwhelmed by the pvp option at first. Of course, a few months later they could be high level with powerful gear and looking for an additional challenge. I know its not that difficult to make a new character, I've made dozens, but not all of us have the time or dedication to create and level multiple characters.

Obviously, obtaining the 'finish the game as a pvp character' achievement would require starting the game as a pvp character. The players who switch later on will be unable to acquire that achievement, but they will be able to join in the pvp fun, if they choose to after they've learned the ropes and feel more comfortable with the game.

One concern about this system is the invitation to join pvp combat given to players who are in a party with someone who has been hostiled by another player. I'm wondering if this invitation should have a time limit. In the example above, without a time limit, the second amazon who did not join the fight could theoretically save her invitation to fight the assassin. Half an hour later, when the assassin has returned to questing, the amazon could then accept the invitation and pk the assassin. Neither of these characters are pvp characters. So is that just the price for the assassin to hostile the pvp druid who belongs to a party, or should that invitation have a timer on it?

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I think the first half of this thread is a good sort of informational primer on pvp in D2. There are a lot of very strong opinions about pvp here on the forums. I think its possible to build a very strong argument against D2 pvp mechanics, although it seems that many people who are down on pvp also don't know enough about it to build that argument.

On that note, I'll add some more information on D2 pvp. Does anyone else remember the term 'double corpse'? If you think having your gold stolen is bad, double corpsing is the ultimate in griefing. The gold you can get back in a few minutes, but how about all of your gear?

I have been very frank about my former griefing experiences. I have double corpsed other players, and yes, I took their gear. For those of you who don't know or don't remember, there was a way to kill another player that would cause him/her to dump all of their gear out on the ground, where you could pick it up and leave with it. It was called 'double corpsing' and it was commonly associated (in my experience) with the lowest form of pking - naked killing.

Believe it or not, it was once a commonly held belief on battlnet that if you didn't get your corpse before leaving a game, you would be unable to get your gear back in the next game. Unfortunately this worked against those who believed it when it came to pking and naked killing. See, a pker could stand on their corpse and repeatedly kill them as they tried to run up and collect it. They would never leave the game, thinking their precious gear would be left behind and lost forever. Often times these players backpacks would fill up with potions as soon as they died. So many rows on your belt disappear when you die, and those potions have to go somewhere. If those players then clicked on their corpse, but were unable to collect it entirely (ie if they accidentally had equipped a random item lying on the ground) and were subsequently killed (pk or otherwise), their gear would be dumped out since the game would not create another corpse, and they had no room in their inventory. (Please feel free to correct me if I am remembering these mechanics wrong, this was a long time ago and my memory is a little foggy. Thanks!)

This was in the days before dying naked meant leaving behind a second and third corpse and so on. That mechanic was implemented for no other reason than in attempt to prevent double corpsing. Even so, after LoD, there was still a way to make people drop their gear on the ground by pking them, although somewhat more difficult. I am not going to detail these mechanics. It has been a very long time since I have done this, but to the best of my knowledge this issue could still exist in game. (before anyone whines - I'm sure double corpsing will NOT be an issue in D3)

At any rate, I did kill this one dude. He kept bragging about having a shako. (note that I was a high level sorceress with the best gear available for pvp - including a shako) His hat wasn't green so I called him on it and declared hostility. He was one of those dudes who stands in town and whines for 1/2 an hour trying to talk tough before fighting. I waited him out and, suffice it to say his hat was actually a peasant crown, the proof was in MY inventory.

Pretty low? I know. But hey, at least I never scammed anyone. Now those dudes were slimy!

Thats why I think the creation thing would be cool, because everyone is a PvP and just akes and chooses when to fight. I think an actual fame type thing like maplestory, or rep like here, would be good for D3 to stop everyone from shit talking. Find a way to get it worked out, and maybe have some achievments for it, that way when people deserve it, you can fame/defame their character. Maybe even some equipmmenbt that is useable by fame, or has effects by fame?

Shitty example, Heros aromor. +##Def per fame, opr fame leve? Instead of character level? I think it could be a cool thing to explore.
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Another idea for created duels, theoretically if you do it right you can build a duiel how you want. Maybe be able to set handicaps, r duel with double, tripple, whatever health for longer duels. Have "Life" duels, like killing somone doesnt drop a body, they have a set number of kills, and first to eliminate the others "Lives" first wins. That would be cool, because whoever dies first is starting there secons life with an already weakened opponent, and advantages change back and forth. Theres alot that can be done consentually, and it leaves much customization open.

"##### requests a duel. Five lives apiece, and he (asks)offers a 20% handicap."

Its always an accept or dont idea, so if somone trys to play you, you deny it, if you duel and somone has a found advantage after the first fight, you might offer a handicap for the next fight to make it more fun and chalenging.

I highly suggest you rethink your strategy here, cause its failing....badly.
Might wanna just stop being so headstrong and just admit you guys are wrong.
Or at least not delete my posts that contain information vital to the conversation regarding the topic. But...you guys know all that is right and I...I am just some lowly avid pvp fan and has no place on such a site right?

Ps: Still waiting for you to get on and show me your awesomeness of clan sick Seth...still waiting...

What a read. You should definitely send this to blizzard. Write it on an old piece of parchment and mail it in a treasure chest, that'll grab their attention.

It def would, actually I believe at 5 years of service they give you a shield, at 10 a sword, and 15 a like 5k ring or something. So, pretty cool company to work for. Also when a major game gets shipped they take whole blizzard crew, including IT guys to Vegas for weekend...

I can do one better. Ill get a treasure chest with working magnets, get a magnetized scimitar painted blue, so when they open it, they fight my flying scimitar and read my treasure lol. Might throw a cookie or two in :p

D3 doesn't have a world, it has 4 players. :/ This kind of dynamic is appropriate to an MMO but not really here.

Most successful MMOs that do this seperate the groups into factions rather than free-for-all, which immediately identifies who is your ally and who you have to watch out for. There's also the possibility of teams going against each other instead of being out for themselves, which makes pvp a form of cooperative play. Again the games here are too small for that to emerge.

In the end we can see how Blizzard is cutting any "unneeded" complexity from the game (lol weapon swap), so any convoluted pvp system that benefits a small minority seems like a non-starter.

Just because Dibalo isnt an MMO doesn t mean it isnt one of the most successful games out there. More people know what Diablo is before other big name franchises. THere doing what they think they need to for a larger audience, and they expect to outdo Diablo two, theres alot they can do, and we dont know alot for now, we just need to wait/

Ughh, I disagree, seperate them. Like you mentioned D2 still hits 60k people a day. Even if thats all the traffic D3 attracts, and they're seperated evenly into PK and NOPK, that leaves 30k people each. Considering you can only have what, 4-8 players in a game, I'm not sure if anytings been finalized, whether you have a 30k player base or 60k is pretty much the same. Its not like your talking about splitting up a game with 40 players on it.

Why seperate them you ask. Everyones just going to make an mf farmer for gear running, and and PK'er for jumping randoms. Good look ever getting an MF farmer agreeing to fight you when they know your obviously a geared/specced out PK'er.

If you want to put it in D2 terms are you going to agree to hostility when your on your 500mf meteorb sorc when you know the sorc that just hostiled you probably has twice your damage/res/health/mana?

I can completely understand some people just don't want to PK. However, for those that do, if you want to do it, you should be forced to live with the risk/fun factor of it at all times. Otherwise its going to amount to pub games full of standard mf characters that will never agree to PK'ing.

I don't even think they should be able to trade with eachother. I'm just going with the assumption drops will be better in more populated games, like they were in D2. If this is the case, why should I be able to completely safely farm with my 500mf sorc in pub games with 0 risk of getting PK'd, when I'm farming gear for PK characters? Considering at some point I'd enjoy going in and stomping some pub mf runs, I think its only fair other people have the chance to do it back to me.

As far as the achievements go, more features are generally better then less, but I just can't find myself caring about worthless features being passed off as rewards. Getting a comment for having a cool generic title is far less cool then just getting a comment for coming up with a cool character name. Ears...yeah sure they're cool, its fun to see piles of them on the ground, but I'd never waste time clicking to pick one up, or inventory space on them. Achievements that amount to just a little icon on some score screen somewhere...as respectfully as I can put it, these "rewards" are all useless.

If these characters must be mixxed, why not actually make pvp "rewards" worth it without disrupting the balance of power at all between a pvp and non-pvp fight. Something reasonable would be give all PVP characters +25% more drops. If your willing to expose yourself at all times to PK'ers, and are good enough to fight them off, then it is far worth your time to go pvp. If your just learning the game or just hate pvp, well then you just get a little less reward, because you have less risk.

As far as griefing in D2 goes, it really wasn't that bad. There were obviously some hacks and glitches people used to grief people, and the game would be better without them. I don't think anyone would be sad to see tppk hacks eliminated, other then the cheaters that use them.

Corpse camping as previously mentioned. You can be super slick and outmaneuver the camper, have a friend chase him off or kill him, save/exit and rejoin if you want to take the guy out that bad, or just save/exit and go to a different game if you think the guys a jerk and you don't want to play with him.

If you consider someone taking your gold griefing...is it really that bad? Its pretty worthless anyhow. You need 50k for a merc on occasion, and some repair money here and there, and all the rest pretty much just gets tossed away gambling. So you die, drop 200k, someone grabs it...big deal. You join some random baal/chaos game, fill up your inventory once, that takes about 30 seconds, sell it, and you made all your money back.

A lot of other forms of griefing could just be worked out by design. Obviously pots are gone so you don't have to deal with people juvving. Hopefully the res/absorb system sees some improvements so you don't always get those guys that run to stash, then come back with enough sorb on to get healed off a direct 50k meteor hit.

Sixen made a great point how you will always have griefers no matter what the game design is. That thing that confuses me though, is without counting hacks/glitches, I don't ever consider myself to have been griefed in D2. Since nobody has any way to track what game I'm in unless I add them as a friend or tell them, and I have the option to squelch whoever I want at any time, theres really nothing you can do to grief anyone. Sure you might be able to sorb my sorc, juv in a duel, camp my corpse, take my gold, but its all legal within the legit limits of the game, its all things I can do right back to you, and its all things that are totally irrelevant as soon as I save/exit and join a different game with different people. I just don't see any legit way to grief someone hard enough to actually screw them in D2.

True, but people will always find and exploit glitches. and 60k people a day, thats through the whole day, and 3 difficulties. Si take 60K / 3 diffculties. 20k / pk(npk) equals 10k people per diff per type a day, and then divide it into HC, Ladder, and everything else, I think hes right about not dividing it.

Way too many long posts, so I'm going to reply to the first one I read

Quote from "dorgeismydog" »

The first one is a nice idea, but for that you dont neccessarily need to choose the PvP option upon chatacer creation would you? Counldnt you just make it so any attempt at (hostality) results in the request to fight? Then any character can express hostility at any time(rather request it at any time) and all the other character has to do is accept or decline? You could also add base rules, like potion use or not, or added or cancled features

No, because that is against the spirit of PK. When you choose a PvP character you are forced to accept any PvP request, while normal characters have got a choice, other than that there is no real difference.

I like this idea, go suggest that for D3

One more thing that is good to have is a way to tell if a player is a PvP character without joining the game, so PKers does not have to join/leave 20 games before finding someone that they can try to kill.

There is a built in assumption in several places in this thread that PvP characters are superior to non PvP characters and so should enjoy better rewards.

A PvP player of course would say that.

But it also takes skill to develop a great PvM (aka PvE) character too and most people specialise in building awesome PvM characters.

There are also the MF farmers, the builds for solo play, builds optimised for playing with a certain other player with certain mercenaries and so on.

What it boils down to is this: Every character build has its purpose. There are so many different purposes. Lets not single out one type of purpose (PvP) and label it as superior and then expect better drops / rewards than other people.

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PvP arenas are a must. Players enter the arena under a clear understanding that the only way to exit is when you die or when you vanquish your foe(s). Reward for victory is +1 to your victory stats. No gear / gold drops. Nice pure battle. You fight to win and not because this is the best (exploit) way to get a drop of a certain item.

This is like some other MMOs. You are not restricted to choosing whether to play PvM or PvP when you initially roll your character. You have a clear choice at any time to play PvP against consenting opponents. No scope for griefing what so ever.

Problem with full rejuves? Then the whinging opponent was a fool to fight without full rejuves too. Problem with stamina? Not in a restricted area arena. Still a problem with stamina? Then the whinging opponent is just too slow. Next time fight someone else who is slow. Problem teleporting? Fight someone else who does the same.

You enter the arena with a clear contract to fight the other person(s). Any complaining means you were out of your depth this time. Tackle and easier opponent next time.

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Any solution / idea needs to be really simple or else it will never be implemented. The OP is just trying too hard to be sophisticated. It just ain't necessary. It just came across as a painful attempt to mainstream PvP as though it was the raison d'?tre for D / DII / DIII. Never was never will be.

Many pkers I think aren't really looking for a challenge. Under this system, they'd probably make non-pvp characters actually, and attempt to pk pvp characters. But I guess that's okay, because those pvp characters actively selected pvp and they know whats coming?

This is an interesting system. It seems like griefing (through pks) would be eliminated, while still keeping some of the pkers happy. Sort of a compromise. That said, I have to say that I'm imagining pvp in D3 is going to be a little different from this, but who knows?

Quote from "Lucion" »

There is a built in assumption in several places in this thread that PvP characters are superior to non PvP characters and so should enjoy better rewards.

Are you suggesting there should be no rewards for pvp? I thought the rewards suggested by this thread were entirely appropriate. What were they, an achievement and maybe some titles? Whats wrong with that?

If yoiu think thats in the spirit of PvP, here doing away with it, you wont be able to just drop in and snipe on anyone anymore, hostility iss gone, there doing it a friendly way. How yet, we dont know, but tis supposed to be friendly

Not enccessarily, people underestimate the skill needed for alot of PvM parts, becaus emost people do them in parties. Endless runs done with party, could be pretty difficult solo untill youve gained a few levels, especially pieces in Hell diff.

So many people dont solo anyhting that most assume PvP is more skillfull, I dont think so becuase its boiled down to spending the whole game building a PvP chracter which is nothing but assigning skills, stats, and searching for equips. After that, msot pure PvP characters are untouchable to normal people, other than other PvPs

I have to say, in D2 I felt like just about anything that made me better at pvp also made me better at pve. Every character I made, I was certain to have maximum resists in hell difficulty. I also capped out and damage reduction. After that I did everything I could to hit as fast and as hard as I can. Increasing your damage and survivability against other players also means increasing your damage and survivability against monsters. All my pvp characters totally owned at pve so that it wasn't a challenge, though that was never my goal.

Now in WoW there is a stat that helps in pvp but not pve - resilience rating. Diablo isn't like that. Every stat that boosts you in pvp also helps in pve. There are stats in D2 that help in pve and not pvp though - such as magic find.

is this a glitch? Im clicking to go to page 3 and it takes meback to the top of two... Anyway, not neccessarily. Not everyhtign you do for PvP helps in PvE except resistances and damage reducers, otherwise agian most PvP characters are a set build with most stats and skills decided form the beginning, so it isnt PvP thats doing it, its the build.